


After the Sword

by cenotaphy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (Emotional) Pain without Plot, Alternate Season/Series 14, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cage memories, Caring Castiel (Supernatural), Caring Sam Winchester, Character Death, Dean Dies, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Support, Fluff, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hunters & Hunting, Hurt/Comfort, I REPEAT DEAN DIES IN THIS, Loss, Lucifer memories, M/M, Men of Letters, Michael Possessing Dean Winchester, Nightmares, Non-Chronological, Sam in Leadership Roles, Sastiel - Freeform, Season/Series 14, Snippets, past Destiel, so much grief and mourning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2019-08-07 18:21:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16413497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cenotaphy/pseuds/cenotaphy
Summary: They kill Dean in a forest in Montana, on a bright and cloudless autumn afternoon.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Mind the tags.

They kill Dean in a forest in Montana, on a bright and cloudless autumn afternoon.

Sam holds Michael by the shoulders. The archangel snarls with Dean's face and even though the veins of Sam's forearms are pulsing gold with nephilim-power, it's taking all of his strength to hold Michael in place. He grits his teeth and hangs on, shouting desperately for Cas. It has to be now. It has to be _right now_ because Sam can't hold his brother's body in place for _one second longer_ , his strength will fail or his resolve will.

Castiel comes in hard and fast and low with the archangel blade, and even though everything in him is screaming _no_ his arm doesn't falter. It can't. Too much depends on this death.

The blade slides in under Michael's ribs—no, Dean's ribs, they're _Dean's_ ribs, this body has never really belonged to Michael—and up into his heart, and Dean's green eyes light up blue and silver and white as Michael screams, dying.

"I love you," Castiel mouths into the terrible radiance of it. He wonders if Dean can hear. He should hope that Dean is asleep for all of this, buried deeply in his own psyche, mercifully spared the bloodshed and the pain and the death, the plans and the desperation and the foiled attempts that have led them to this, this final stand, this last resort, their only move in a losing game—but he's selfish. He hopes Dean hears.

Sam has his arms wrapped around Michael now, his face tucked into the hollow where Dean's neck meets his shoulder, eyes squeezed shut against that blinding light of endings. A tear glitters on his cheek like a diamond. His mouth moves silently, the words lost in the roar.

Castiel's resolve fades alongside the light dimming from Dean's eyes and mouth. He lets the blade slip out of his grasp, brings his hands up, clutches blindly at Sam's upper arms.

"It's done. He's gone. He's gone, Sam."

His vision is blurry. They sink to the ground, the three of them, wrapped up in each other. Dean's head falls forward onto Castiel's shoulder. His body sags, lifeless, in Sam's arms.

"Dean," says Sam into Dean's collarbone. His voice breaks like glass. Ash filters through the sun-dappled air, etching the pattern of wings onto the pine needles carpeting the forest floor.

Mary comes limping up, spattered with blood, her left arm dangling uselessly. When she sees their three-person tableau, she pulls up short, her face twisting in grief. Bobby is on her heels and he puts a hand on her shoulder as she slowly crumples to her knees, head bowed.

Jack comes bounding over a moment later, breathless. He skids to a stop beside Mary and Bobby, his eyes going wide with shock. They'd made sure he knew it might come to this—he'd been one of the ones who argued most strongly for it, if it should come to down to this (Dean or the world, why is it always a Winchester or the world) but he's just a _child_ , Castiel thinks. He didn't really understand. What it would mean. What this would mean.

Other hunters are staggering over from their scattered battles. Nobody gets too close. On the faces of the ones who didn't know Dean—apocalypse-world hunters mostly, and some of the British Men of Letters that Ketch had managed to recruit—Castiel sees shock and fear more than grief. There are others, though. Apocalypse-Charlie sets her mouth in a thin, trembling line—she hadn't known Dean long, but it had been enough. Jody staggers back into Claire's arms, her hand over her mouth, her body shaking with sudden sobs. Beside her Donna's face is a white mask. Castiel sees a flash of coppery-red far back among the trees, near the crest of the low hill, and knows that Rowena is leaving, her work done now that the battle is over.

Sam is crying. Low, muffled sounds that shake his body like physical blows. Castiel can feel the reverberations shaking through Dean's body. A shadow falls over them as Mary approaches at last, her feet dragging as if it's physically painful for her to draw near.

Dean should be with his family, Castiel thinks. _He_ should go; he can mourn Dean in solitude, where he won't be intruding, an unwelcome member of the species that caused all of this in the first place. He shifts, even as his hands curl rebelliously to grip Dean's shoulders. He can't bring himself to let go. _Let go, Castiel._

Sam moves his head, locks eyes with Castiel.

"Don't," he says, fierce and furious, his voice cracking. "Don't leave me here with his body, Cas. Don't you dare."

Castiel can't tell where his own grief ends and Sam's begins. It sweeps him up, a tidal wave, dark and heavy. He wonders if he aimed the blade right, or if it's embedded in his own chest. Sam presses his face into his brother's back. "Just stay," he whispers, no longer looking up. He could be talking to Castiel. He could be talking to Dean. He could be talking to both of them. Except that Dean is—

 _Gone_.

The sun sinks lower and the shadows of the pines stretch longer. Castiel stays.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't my usual thing but it's been rattling around in my head all summer and I have to see where it goes. It's mostly going to be snippets without an overarching plot and there isn't a regular update schedule.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It wasn't how they'd wanted it to go. Of course it wasn't.

It wasn't how they'd wanted it to go. Of course it wasn't.

How they'd wanted it to go: Dean home at the Bunker with them, laughing too loud around a mouthful of popcorn, Sam and Cas glancing away from the TV to smile incredulously at each other behind his back. How they'd wanted it to go: Dean shaken but conscious in the backseat of the Impala on the way home, holding Mary's hand, Cas's worried blue eyes peering at him from the passenger side. How they'd wanted it to go: Dean, home, with them.

Their best hope had been the hyperbolic pulse generator. Ketch had tracked it down—Sam isn't sure how the thing had wound up in Shanghai after they'd used it on Lucifer, or how Ketch had knocked its whereabouts loose from the black market grapevine. Ketch doesn't volunteer the information and Sam doesn't ask. Just takes the golden egg and nods his thanks. He lets Cas take over from there—it's hard for Sam to look at Ketch, desperate times notwithstanding. Mostly it just makes him remember Eileen's battered corpse.

"This'll really work?" Mary asks. She's nursing a beer in the war room. Sam takes a seat across from her, spins the inscribed egg in his hands. He can hear Cas talking quietly in the library, updating Ketch on the little they trust him to know.

"Ketch seems confident it will."

"I suppose," she says, flipping the bottle cap through her fingers absently. Mary doesn't much care to speak to Ketch either.

Cas comes back in, his eyes almost laser-like in their focus. "We should go soon. Michael will be on the move."

***

How it goes: Rowena can't track Michael directly, but she can track the blips he leaves in his wake, small ripples of power whenever he works his will on the world in some show of force. He's becoming more careless, making larger gestures of power as he continues putting the various cogs of his plan into place. They're pretty sure Michael's next move is to raise the Shedim, which, as Cas tells Sam emphatically, _cannot_ be allowed to happen.

"We'll stop him, Cas," says Sam. They're in a tiny motel in a tiny town southwest of nowhere. Rowena's map is spread out on the table in front of them, showing Michael's location to be only an hour outside of town. (Incidentally, an hour from anywhere else, as well. Canyon land, uninhabited. A good spot to bring your demon army to the surface.)

Cas says nothing, just looks at Sam. Cas is looking haggard these days, tired in ways Sam's not used to seeing in angels but is unfortunately all too accustomed to seeing in Cas. Just that week Mary had passed by where Cas was sitting at the map table and brushed her hand lightly on his shoulder, against the side of his face, a concerned touch, just in passing. Sam for his part hasn't commented; he knows he's looking pretty fucking ragged himself.

"We'll stop him," he assures Cas again, and folds up the map. "I'll put this in the car, let's leave in five."

But maybe deep down Sam doesn't feel the confidence he's pushing out towards Cas, because when he steps out into the desert sun the first thing he does is take out a pencil and scribble a ward on the motel room door. Then he gets into the Impala and drops the map into the passenger seat, and then he turns the key in the engine and floors it out of the parking lot. He thinks he can hear Cas banging on the door, impassable now to angels, thinks he can hear Cas shouting for him. Sam ignores it and drives, the pulse generator safely stowed in the trunk.

The ward won't hold Cas in the room for long, but there aren't any other cars in the lot, and Cas doesn't have the map. Sam just has to hope it buys him enough time. It's just in case. Just in case. He _needs_ to believe the pulse generator will work, but if it doesn't...if it doesn't, then Michael will break his neck likely or not and Cas needs to be there to continue the fight. And to pick up what's left of Dean when it's all over.

***

How it goes: out on the canyon rim, sandy soil and rust-colored stone under his feet and a view at his back that would make a landscape photographer weep with joy, Sam plants his feet. He holds out the pulse generator, shouting the rapid-fire syllables of the spell, and Michael tips back his head and laughs in his face.

It's not even Dean's laugh, of course; Michael's laugh is thinner, almost bell-like. It reminds Sam of Lucifer and even here, even now, Sam has to fight the thought off. _He's dead._ Dean killed Lucifer. To save Sam. Dean, throwing himself on the sword for Sam, again.

"This isn't some cheap knockoff I'm squatting in," says Michael. He cocks his head, his hand still raised over the rock, above the fissure he's been deepening. "This is my _true_ _vessel_. Your toys aren't going to work here."

Sam's heart flutters erratically in his chest. The afternoon sun illuminates the landscape in harsh gold light, but it's panic that makes his vision white out for a second. He's out of options. There's nothing else. He lets the pulse generator slide through his fingers and it hits the rock with a metallic thud, rolls off into the sagebrush somewhere.

"I appreciate the effort, at the very least," says Michael. He snaps the fingers of his free hand and Sam is saved having to come up with a response as a blast of angelic power sends him hurtling off the edge of the cliff.

He ricochets off three different boulders, feeling parts of his ribcage give way each time, and finally lands flat on his back on a ledge halfway down. The pain is excruciating. His entire spine is on fire, but he can't feel anything below his waist. He can barely move his arms. Michael doesn't even lean over the edge to check his handiwork, and Sam knows it's not because he's confident the fall killed Sam. Michael just doesn't care.

It's two hours before Cas arrives, breathless and angry; another hour before Cas can pick his way down the cliff to the ledge where Sam lies paralyzed.

"I'm sorry," Sam slurs at him. After the first hour he'd stopped hoping Cas would find him and started vaguely hoping to die. The sun has been beating against his face for hours and to his bleary eyes now Cas is just a narrow slash of shadow in a world lit in glowing sunset colors. "I'm so sorry."

***

How it goes: it takes Castiel an hour to find a car to hot-wire, an hour to drive to the canyons, pinpointing the location from memory. He pushes his way through scrub brush and stunted trees and dead ends until he finds an outcropping with a deep fissure in the stone, claw marks gouged around it like a host of demons have dragged their way out of the depths of hell. Which, of course, is exactly what happened.

He looks over the edge of the canyon lip and finds Sam almost immediately, limbs askew on a jut of sandstone halfway down, hips twisted at a horrific angle. Sam doesn't move when Castiel shouts his name. Doesn't move forty-five minutes later when Castiel finally scrambles down onto the ledge, dirt-smeared and frantic, afraid of what he'll find there.

"Sam."

Sam blinks at Castiel, his eyes unfocused. His face is streaked with tears and blood. The faint rattles of his breath have to fight their way around the violent shivers that shake his arms and chest, but his legs are utterly still.

"'m s'rry," Sam says deliriously. Blood oozes from his mouth; his vowels are lost in it, drowned. "'m so sorry."

"Shh."

"C's. It. Didn't work. I'm s-sorr—"

Castiel puts his hand on Sam's forehead, presses down. It takes a lot of grace to fix all the broken bones, reverse the internal bleeding. The power pours out of him and Castiel rocks back onto his heels, unsteady, suddenly exhausted.

Sam's inhale is loud, his breath catching on the sudden lack of impediment. His chest rises, whole. Sam pushes himself into a sitting position. "Cas, I—"

"You were right," Castiel interrupts him. He wants very badly to lie down, to sleep. To close his eyes and wake to find that Dean is back, perhaps stomping around the Bunker yelling about the state of his kitchen, perhaps complaining that Castiel didn't taken better care of Sam in his absence. "He would have killed me."

"Both of us," Sam says. "He would've killed both of us. I'd be dead now, if it wasn't for you." The _thank you_ is implicit. Castiel looks away. Dean would be with them, if Castiel had never let Lucifer ride him out of the Cage.

"He raised the Shedim."

"We'll find another way," says Sam. His voice is a rasp, but Castiel has no water to offer him. Sam's injuries are healed, but there's still blood soaked into his shirt in the spot where a snapped rib punctured the skin. His eyes are fever-bright. "Like we always do."

(That isn't, of course, how it goes.)


	3. Chapter 3

The first week after Lucifer's death—the first week after Michael _kills_ Lucifer—all Sam dreams of is Dean. Dean with glowing blue-white eyes, Dean charring Sam to ashes with a single lifted finger.

When his nightmares bring him back around, as they always do, to Lucifer, it's almost a relief. Almost.

He wakes screaming, the taste of sulfur heavy on his tongue, reaching all the way down his throat. He's so tangled in the sweat-drenched bed sheets that for a moment all he can do is thrash helplessly in the dark, breath stuck somewhere down below his ribs. His vision keeps lighting up in starburst flashes of panic, and the sibilant voice rattles in his ear and tells him he's nothing, he will bow, _he will bow_ —

"Sam, he's dead! He's _dead_!"

Sam flails wildly as he tries to sit up, and a strong, solid arm wraps itself around his chest, holding him in place. He clutches at it, fighting desperately to remember how to inhale. A voice not at all like Lucifer's says, urgently, in his ear:

"Sam, he's gone. He can't hurt you again. Not ever."

The light flicks on. Sam finally sucks in a ragged breath and turns his head, hearing the gentle susurration of his own stubble as it brushes over Cas's cheek. Cas has his chin tucked over Sam's shoulder, the concerned lines of his forehead hovering scant inches from Sam's nose.

"Cas," Sam croaks. "Cas, I—he—"

"I know. But he's dead. He's dead." Cas starts using his free hand to disengage the twisted sheets. Sam hears a loud staccato sound and realizes it's his own teeth, chattering. He's so cold, why is he so cold. _Most people think I burn hot_.

"I felt him," he tells Cas. He wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, clenches his jaw so his teeth will stop knocking together. It's not _fair_. It's over. It's supposed to be _over_. Michael is loose on the world and Dean's been missing for over a week and everything else is gone to shit, generally, but Lucifer is _supposed to be over_.

He doesn't realize he's babbling out loud until Cas says, gently, "It _is_ over."

"Not for me," Sam mutters. It'll never be over. He'll never be free. "You don't _know_ , Cas—"

"Don't I?"

Sam blanches. "Shit. I'm sorry—"

"You have nothing to apologize for." Cas straightens the sheets and suddenly they're dry and clean, the smell of fear replaced by a crisp, windblown scent, like pine trees or the air before a storm. "I'm only saying I understand a little of what you're going through, Sam, even if I can never know all of it."

"Did he make you see us die," Sam whispers.

"Yes." Cas looks at the opposite wall, his gaze distant. "He'd make me hold the knife."

Sam curls down under the sheets, trying desperately not to shiver. "It was like drowning, Cas. Every second, like suffocating, like—like—"

"Like having your head held underwater," Cas finishes quietly. He smoothes the blankets down but keeps his hand on Sam's shoulder, a reassuring weight.

"I keep thinking about Dean. Going through that."

Cas's eyes darken. "It's likely he's simply being kept asleep inside his own head," he says, though he sounds as if he's trying to convince himself as well as Sam. "Michael was never known to be as...cruel, as Lucifer."

"Not _your_ Michael," says Sam. He saw what this Michael had made of the apocalypse world.

Cas doesn't respond, but his jaw trembles.

"I'm sorry," says Sam again. He doesn't even know what he's apologizing for, really. His brain feels heavy, numb, exhaustion wrapping it like cotton batting. He gropes weakly for Cas's wrist. "Cas."

"Shh," says Cas gently. He moves his hand up to Sam's forehead, his palm cool and soothing. Sam feels his hair unstick from the back of his neck, his skin and clothes no longer clammy. "You need to rest, Sam. Let me help you."

Sam shouldn't ask this of Cas, it's a waste of grace for something so small, but he's so very tired, and the Devil prowls just out of reach, in his nightmares. "Okay," he whispers.

Cas doesn't move his hand, but something cool and sweet washes through Sam like a gentle rain, and he's deeply, dreamlessly asleep before he can say _thank you_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :0 How are you guys feeling about this one so far? I'm usually Destiel w TFW-dynamics all the way, so the Sam/Cas vibes and Dean being capital-G Gone are a bit out of my comfort zone (which is part of why I'm trying it, in fairness). Any thoughts/feels are much appreciated!


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